No. 423 NAI DFA Bonn Embassy D/14/1
Memorandum signed by Thomas J. Kiernan
'Official German Attitude towards Ireland'
(Copy)
Bonn, 14 June 1956
- The main relations of the Legation are with the Foreign Ministry and the Ministries of Agriculture and Economics. Owing to the historical break made by the war and defeat, the top-level administration is new, and the heads in these Ministries have no continuity of service going back before the last war. They are new men, with a new outlook, functioning under a type of government which is new to Germany. Senior Foreign Office officials, such as Professor Hallstein,1 Professor Grove, Professor Caspari, have been drawn from established university-teaching posts; Dr. Vestrick,2 the State Secretary of the Economics Ministry, from an established industrial career; and Dr. Sonnemann,3 head of the Ministry of Agriculture, from the general-secretaryship of the German Farmers’ Union (the Niedersächsisches Landvolk). Attached to this report is a brief note on the three State Secretaries (Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Agriculture, and Economics).4
- Taking it for granted that the broad framework of policies of the Ministries with which we have dealings is conditioned by the terms of the German-state raison d’état; and accepting the premise that the position of Ireland in the international relations which are of concern to Germany is of no or insignificant importance; that, for instance, Lebanon and Iceland and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan are heavyweights, in German foreign office thinking, in comparison with Ireland; it is proposed in this report to attempt to describe the attitude of the three Departments mentioned, on the official level, to German-Irish relations, as evidenced in the Legation’s dealings with them.
- In any proposal made to the Foreign Ministry, the conclusion reached is that the first reaction will be stultifying. There is far from being a sympathy of approach and, instead, the impression built up over a number of instances is that the mental approach will be one of rejection, followed by investigation to find reasons to justify rejection. I had expected the reverse: that at least the attitude would be an agnostic or neutral attitude to begin with, – an open-minded approach. I have not found it so. In making any approach to the Foreign Ministry, I should now anticipate a stone wall without a gate and so prepare for climbing over the wall rather than (as I had at first imagined) trying to find the right key to open a gate. There is certainly no half-open door needing only a push.
- The story of our bomb-damage claim illustrates the position. Discussions on the claim began in August 1951, at a time when the Federal Republic was barely two years in existence and when the Foreign Ministry had been just five months established. The Allied High Commission still reserved to itself the powers of veto over important fields, including German foreign relations, where only a limited permission had been given to enable the Federal Government negotiate certain routine types of trade agreements. The Federal Government, itching at this restriction, was anxious to negotiate and conclude agreements of as varied and comprehensive a character with as many foreign governments as possible.
The Irish bomb-damage claim gave such an opportunity; and negotiations started with assurances from the German side of the abundant goodwill and sense of honour which prompted them to wish to settle the claim. The dissimulation (for such it proved to be) was carried to the point that Dr. van Scherpenberg5 went to Dublin in July 1952 to initial a draft agreement between his Government and the Irish Government, and did so, despite the fact that days before his departure, the Allied High Commission had in writing rebuked his Government for having entered into such negotiations and had forbidden any further talks to be carried on.6
You are familiar with the subsequent history of the claim, and it will not have escaped your notice that German enthusiasm for settling the claim waned with the lessening of the political need for such agreements on the German side; so much so that the German delegation sent to Dublin in June 1953 had instructions to take a completely negative attitude to the Irish claim even though the validity of the claim had been accepted in principle a year earlier. The entire reports on the negotiations show a superficially friendly attitude and completely unco-operative real intention.
- Even in such a small matter as the proposals we made for a reciprocal arrangement for postage-free diplomatic bags, the Foreign Ministry, after seven months’ delay in answering our representations, merely wrote that for budget reasons the German Post Office could not ‘give consideration to the procedure suggested by the Government of Ireland’; which is obviously not a serious way of rejecting a simple proposal for reciprocity of this kind. The procedure of throwing the onus of decision on another department, with technical interests to conserve but not interested in the broader concern of over-all relations between two countries, may be illustrated by the refusal to allow us to bring the Department of Agriculture map from the Frankfurt Fair to the Legation without either paying Customs Duty on it or sending it to the free port of Hamburg and then re-directing it from there to the Legation in Bonn. In this matter, the Foreign Ministry was completely unhelpful and negative and the matter was finally, after much discussion and unnecessary expenditure for storage, settled directly in a cloak and dagger fashion, with the Finance Department and Customs authorities.
- At no time during the past five years has the Federal Government when speaking either through the Foreign Office or through the Economics Ministry, ever made a concession or helped in an arrangement designed to redress the unfavourable balance in Irish-German trade, other than what the maximum of self-interest had indicated. There has been no general attitude to cultivate trade on jointly favourable lines. Our numerous requests to relieve hardship or facilitate trading have been met only in such minimum measure as did not cause any inconvenience to the German side to grant. This was especially so during the 1951-53 period when German restrictions on imports affected our major items of trade, especially textiles and foodstuffs. There was a notable absence of signs of friendliness which would have helped to soften the harshness of the licensing system. Exceptional treatment, which we knew to be within the power of the Ministries to afford, was not granted at the times and in the measures as we requested it.
- It might be thought that in the interest of maintaining and increasing the German exports to Ireland, the German Trade Delegation in Dublin last October would have welcomed opportunities of seeing possibilities in a reciprocal trade from Ireland to Germany. In this connection, the action of the leader of the German Trade Delegation in the matter of a quota for smokers’ pipes is of interest, not so much as an individual case of what was described in the Minutes of our Foreign Trade Committee (11th November 1955) as action ‘contrary to good taste, if not to protocol’, but rather as an evidence of the attitude taken by some of the senior officials. Dr. Junker then held minister rank, and is about to be appointed as ambassador to Turkey. This matter led to a protest made verbally by the Department to the German Legation in Dublin on 17th November, 1955 (vide Mr. Iremonger’s 314/10/6/9 of 21st November 1955: ‘we made it clear that we regarded Dr. Junker’s behaviour as distinctly unpleasant.’).7
- Coming to an attempt at providing some explanations for the attitude, made up of indifference and intransigence, there is first to be noted the general difference between, for instance, the climate of Irish official opinion and that of German official opinion. When we have a scheme to administer, it is never so rigid in any of its parts that special cases cannot be adjusted and accommodated in some form; and it is the same, I found, in the Australian official methods; and in the British; the same, only more so, in the Italian. In the German official way of action there is nothing of this. There is rigidity. The scheme itself assumes a greater importance than we would think desirable to achieve its ends. One could get the impression that the scheme has an untouchable importance in itself, instead of being regarded as a pliant method of administration. Unless, therefore, a proposition fits neatly into the scheme, the reaction is naturally one of rejection. This would help towards explaining why there appears intransigence. It amounts perhaps to this, that what would be intransigence in an Irish administrative official is the officially desirable and normal attitude of the German administrative official.
- Added to this, there is a minimum of devolution of responsibility to single officers even on unimportant points. Everything in official conversations is minuted, copied, circulated to all whom it may concern, and upward submissions made. The machine is always in evidence; the individual never. Whatever the merits or demerits of this (and I am not, naturally, dealing with such a subject) it does go some distance to fill in the background to rationalise the attitude I have been trying to illustrate. Which means that it is not peculiar to the treatment of Irish affairs.
- In regard to Irish affairs, the weak position of the country is a factor of practical importance. Even such strongly placed countries as Yugoslavia and Egypt had to invoke big-stick methods, and in the case of Yugoslavia, a public speech of threat and reprimand by Marshal Tito,8 in order to get a move-on in the German Foreign Office. Against the rigidity of German official approach, this strong-arm method of discussion pays dividends. Certainly, we stand to gain nothing by being easy in our approach to dealings with Germany. We have, however, had no bargaining counters, e.g. when, last September (1955), we asked for the revalidation of unutilised licences for cattle imports and could use only the argument that the agreed minute of discussions in the 1954 trade talks provided for ‘favourable consideration’ being given by the German side to the granting of facilities to meet any import demand outside the quota. The instruction given me for the approach to the Foreign Office was based on the following note in the Foreign Trade Committee’s Minutes (23-9-55): ‘Mr. O’Beirne9 inquired what our attitude should be if the German authorities refused to give satisfaction in regard to cattle imports; and Mr. Breathnach10 stated that, in this event, the Minister should express his extreme dissatisfaction in view of the adverse balance of our trade with Germany and should state that he would have to refer back to his Government for further instructions.’ The argument based on the balance of trade was not taken seriously in Bonn because it was known that Irish importers were satisfied to keep on trading with German manufacturers because of the competitive value of the German supplies on offer.
- The unfortunate necessity that has led to a restriction of imports into Ireland, to safeguard the up-building of our balance of payments position, is the kind of factor which can help, simply because it hurts German interests, much better than the most persuasive argumentation in regard to lessening the obstacles to our doing trade with Germany. We gain nothing, therefore, by trying to alleviate the hardship of the recent imposts. We may well gain by prolonging longer than others those that hit specially at imports from Germany. This would improve the atmosphere for trade talks in Bonn at the end of this year. We could bid higher, if our trade prospects justify such a policy, in regard to concessions. You will have noted from Mr. O’Ceallaigh’s report of 17th May 195611 about import tariffs that a bargaining position in regard to a bulk purchase of Irish cattle is ready to hand.
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